The
Road of Time

The introduction of the
book

Have a good reading !

In which
we suggest that an instinctive dialogue with nature can help us exercise our
own free will.

The Road of
Time is a little mountain road which winds endlessly through the Geological
Reserve of Haute-Provence, from the medieval city of Sisteron down to the
Asse Valley, passing close to the city of Digne. Apart from its geological
value, and the breathtaking beauty of the surrounding landscape, it is a road
of particular interest, because historians think that it leads to the city
of Theopolis, otherwise known as the "City of God", St Augustin's
famous city which despite the numerous archeological explorations which have
been carried out in the area, remains undiscovered to this day: their conjecture
is based upon information contained in a 5th century Roman inscription
carved into one of the rocks on the "Pierre Ecrite" mountain pass,
which forms a sort of "entrance hall" into the Geological Reserve.

The mystery
surrounding the Road of Time is only one of many attractive features of its
enchanting landscape: the stunning fossils, mysterious rock formations, "magic"
stones, hidden yourts high up in the hills, its astonishing wildlife and enigmatic
natives whose personality is thrown into sharp relief by the area's outstanding
natural light – each has its own peculiarity which lends a sense of mystery
to the path. And this is all the more marked because the rare encounters
we make seem to contain some sort of meaning, as if we were in a role-playing
game where each actor had clues to offer us for our onward journey.

This low range
of mountains, where the altitude varies from five hundred to two thousand
metres, is exceptional because of the huge wealth of possible routes it offers
through the reserve, confronting us with a multiplicity of paths from which
to choose. Hiking here, I have felt how one's inner strength is restored
by these kinds of walks, where you never quite know where you're going, or
what you're going to find.

Generally,
by taking the steepest way up, and after several hours of climbing, during
which my mind finally managed to free itself from all physical tension, I
would at last find myself becoming receptive to the nature around me. And
then nature itself would take over from my body to answer my inner questions,
like a sort of echo of my mind. This new-found sensitivity would prove ample
reward for all the effort required for getting up there, and each time it
would come over me quite unexpectedly. We often forget the virtues of hill-walking,
which go far beyond the mere physical exercise of it, for it helps the mind
to refocus in a sane and liberated environment. Inside and out, altitude
lifts us and broadens our vision: the meaning of our life becomes clearer,
or may even reappear, as if, by nourishing our intuition in this way, we can
allow it to take over our mental reins once more. Nature offers us a way
of learning how to circumvent difficulties, both the inner and outer kind,
by revealing an entirely unsuspected range of possibilities to the "living
beings" we are; like some challenge we must seek within ourselves before
testing it upon the training ground of intuition, as we search for the right
attitude to adopt on our progress through real life.

To an even
greater extent than altitude and visibility, the characteristic solitude and
difficulty of hill-walking have the effect of making us refocus on ourselves,
lending the sort of nobility to our inner life that is gained through initiatory
journeys. Of all the difficulties, the uphill climb is the one which best
compensates for the effort it demands. Other obstacles symbolise eternal
problems, from the most commonplace to those that take the longest to overcome:
and yet here in nature the rocks, thorns, dense forest, waterfalls, rocky
outcrops and ambiguous paths all offer unhoped-for possibilities for overcoming
them – as long as we look for them. Thus they act as so many invitations
to find new methods of adapting in real life. This low-lying mountainous
country teaches us an unexpected lesson, no doubt through its richness and
diversity: nature shows us that every problem contains its own solution, as
soon as we are ready to admit that the problem exists and listen to what it
means, so that we can then serenely contemplate the other possible paths open
to us.

Is this, then,
the true virtue of the mountain range, that it constantly offers us the gentleness
of multiple compromise from within its large spectrum of nuances? Or is it
the majesty of the place and its profound silence which make us feel that
a third person is watching our progress, always ready to suggest a new direction?
In the worst or best of situations, an unexpected encounter sometimes invites
itself into our reflexions, seeming to act as a signal that one phase is coming
to an end, and another must be overcome. During this encounter, our plans
may suddenly alter, or see ahead to some future evolution, or merely absorb
information which will be useful at the next fork in the path. And then,
almost like confirmation that the encounter was planned in advance by the
universe, the choice to be made at the next fork in the path will appear obvious,
as if someone had changed the points at the junction. Sometimes, it may simply
be the weather which either guides or restricts us through encouragement or
dissuasion, simulating the conditions for our decision according to our mood.
Or else "signs" are sent directly by nature, optical illusions made
up of shadow and light or dynamic effects, noise made by the wind or passing
animals, appearing to us like warnings, invariably exerting an influence over
our journey, although we would never seriously admit as much to ourselves.

And so it
is often these chance meetings which direct us along the Road of Time, encounters
with talking stones (17), natural phenomena or living beings. The same chance
which is responsible for altering our real lives, when we meet our future
partner, employer or friend. But why is it that we have to wait until we're
wandering through the countryside to discern the hidden meaning of the most
significant encounters of our lives, those meetings which lend a new meaning
to chance? Could it be that it is easier to comprehend things when we are
involved in a lighter, more detached sort of way?

Having experienced
all these encounters and adventures on the Road of Time as so many symbols
or signs which helped me better to understand my entire life, while at the
same time feeling that I had completed a stage of personal evolution, I gradually
came to realise unexpected potential in terms of my own free will. Was it
the transposition of ordinary existence, in which I seemed to be confronted
with major choices almost every day? Whatever the case, I developed an ability
to observe elements of my surroundings which had nothing to do with my own
problems, but which nonetheless allowed me to reach a state of awareness which
helped make them disperse. Sometimes it happened quite simply, as soon as
the critical aspect of them disappeared. More than this, though, whenever
these elements appeared to act as an assembly of constituent parts talking
in the same voice, conversing in the language of coincidence, I would reap
a harvest of suggestions that would help me create my own life-map.

Just as nature's
marvels and obstacles invited me to listen to them as I walked, forming a
mirror to my inner questions or even an extension of my actual being, so I
discovered that by listening to the events in my real life, rather than merely
submitting to them as if they were constraints, new and unsuspected paths
would then open up before me. Was this an alternative practice to rational
but dubious choices, or heightened personal intuition? I couldn't say – except
that the experiences I went on to have as a result went far beyond everything
I might have hoped for in terms of benefit, and it was then that I realised
that I had to share my good luck.

The first
manifestation of this good luck came in the form of a series of extraordinary
coincidences which happened to me on the Road of Time, seeming to act as confirmation
that I had taken the right path. They led me to think long and hard about
the meaning of time, something I had been thinking of for many decades, bringing
me to an intuitive sensation of communing with the elements of the universe,
as if my brain were reaching far beyond the limits of my own self. I went
on to understand how this sensation, which is a source of happiness and confidence
in life, might well come from something other than a mere illusion. And so,
little by little, I began to take apart the mechanics of things as mysterious
as the phenomenon of synchronicity* (see glossary). In this book, I will
be exposing these mechanisms using a double-edged scientific and philosophical
approach, underpinned by what is intended to be implacable logic. The reader
may be surprised to observe that science, poetry and spirituality can be excellent
bedfellows.

The Road of
Time is such an effective and natural model that I cannot but make liberal
use of it to explain the fundamental things in life which it has helped me
to understand, culminating above all in the ability to reconcile science and
faith. The Geological Reserve will provide us with metaphorical and symbolic
terrain on which to express our mental environment, so that we may explain
and exercise our inner potential, thanks to a collection of powerful analogies
corresponding to mental properties: not just the altitude, frequentation or
difficulty of the walk, but also the presence of water, direction, temperature
and weather conditions, as we will be seeing later on.

In this book,
we will reveal unheard-of mechanisms for exerting the freedom we possess for
"programming" our future, a freedom which exploits little-known
intellectual properties and which it is infinitely more judicious to understand
using this type of metaphor than by any pre-established psycho-scientific
approach.

We will show
that we have unexploited potential deep inside us, in particular an ability
immediately to activate that future which best corresponds to our intentions,
from among the multiple possible paths of our life. And yet, imprisoned as
we are within our everyday conditioning, we are generally unable to exploit
this potential, because our decisions are hampered by all sorts of mistaken
conceptions – about our minds and the idea we have of ourselves – and suffer
interference from various determinisms, notably habit.

Thus the choice
of countless paths we can follow through the Geological Reserve will serve
as a metaphor to mimic, comprehend and even experiment on the mechanisms we
are about to reveal. First of all, to simplify, I will sum up these possibilities
using the model of the "Tree of Life"*. We will see that most of
the time in our lives, we don't experiment with the wealth of our potential
choices, and even that we seldom venture off the beaten track, assailed as
we are by pre-conceived ideas (clichés, fixations and all sorts of pre-conditioning):
most of the time we keep to the tarmac, the "main trunk" of our
life.

In this essay
on time, I will be introducing, in a completely rational manner and for the
price of a first, steep section about the reversal of time and non-causal
logic, the astonishingly little-known mechanism of a truly magical element
of life, by suggesting a new Theory of Time, called the "Theory of Double
Causality*". This theory will then be put into practice and tested against
experience, the Road of Time having been chosen not only as a testing ground
for metaphorical simulation, but also for real-life experiments.

I will not
be calling on any esoteric references, but simply on pure logic and the latest
scientific progress, modern physics in particular.

For the Theory
of Double Causality is primarily one of scientific interest, because of the
way it casts light on the oddest results of the Theory of Relativity*, Statistical
Physics*, Chaos Theory* and Quantum Mechanics*.

Each of these
peculiar branches of physics will bring its own light to the subject of time,
based on the principles of irreversibility*, causality* or determinism*, the
philosophical reaches of which are essential to allow man to find his place
in the universe. From this point of view, it must be admitted that these
principles have always played a reductionist role, even going as far as to
deny the existence of free will*.

And yet the
authenticity of free will is the most fundamental hypothesis of the
Theory of Double Causality, to which we will add a second and no less fundamental
hypothesis, which is that the universe has already happened.

This immediately
raises the following question: how can we remain free to act in a universe
where our future has already happened?

The answer
on which the Theory of Double Causality rests is that of the "Tree of
Life"*: our future already exists in multiple versions, or branches,
all coexisting simultaneously and ubiquitously, but as "potentials*"
which haven't yet been lived.

On the strength
of these two fundamental hypotheses, which are summed up by this unavoidable
consequence, we will demonstrate in this book that time possesses virtues
which we can in all honesty qualify as "magical".

This reference
to "magic*" that I employ when talking about "mechanisms"
of time may well cause some surprise, but considering its extraordinary properties,
no more accurate term could be chosen to qualify the marvellous potential
of the adventure of our life as the universe invites us to live it, if only
we are willing to bring our sensitivity and our minds up to the level of its
own subtle laws, and thus consent to become the magicians of our own lives.